You Are What You Eat (Takashi Agera)

You Are What You Eat (Takashi Agera)
Date of Cutscene:	16 May 2024
Location:	Dorms
Synopsis:	Be careful what you eat. You just might get it.
Cast of Characters:	Takashi Agera
Tinyplot:	Operation: Past

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Takashi Agera awoke with a start... again. Phantoms, nightmares, shadows, and things that didn't make any sense running through his head, again. Most of the effects of the 'illness' had subsidied, but his dreams... his dreams were still not his own. Dreams? Or memories? Or some mutation of half-formed memories mixed with his own mind? He'd probably have to loop back with Mamoru or another one of Beryl's ancient enemies to try and figure out what all was real. But did it matter? None of the memories infecting him were his own. None of those memories belonged to him. Most of them didn't even belong to Beryl.

How long had it been since he had a solid night's sleep? Since he absorbed Beryl's portal, really. So... a week and a half?

He had to close the thing, he'd agreed to help with that, so no more civilians fell in or worse. But it turns out closing a portal made by a woman who made a contract with some sort of monstrous sun demon wasn't as simple as he made it sound when he told Mamoru and Luna he could do it. Beryl didn't have some sort of skill or solution to keep her portal present, it was just so monstrously powerful it fought against reality's attempts to close it. But it was power, energy, Dark Energy. That was Takashi's forte, it was what made Riventon who he was. So he'd attempted to close the portal by absorbing it.

And from the standpoint of sealing the portal? It worked perfectly.

The problem was that afterwards, that energy - that muddle of memory and phantom and such - was within him and -that- took a toll on him. His own ability to manipulate his energy was... challenged, at that point, and all of his dreams and thoughts were about memories that weren't his own, places he'd never been, a time he hadn't existed - at least not to his knowledge. And as best he could figure, he was getting brief flashes of disconnected memories from everyone participating - not enough information to be useful in any way, but one hell of a repeated headtrip. Flashes throughout the day of disconnected moments in what seemed to be some sort of prehistoric war - screaming, terror. And the night, the dreams - they were more cohesive, sort of, but also worse. Terror. He'd woken up in terror a few times.

And yet, this was Takashi Agera - so he hadn't pushed himself to expel to the energy or the thoughts. Data, even if it was corrupted and garbled and sickening, was still data, so he was trying to deciper it. Even if it meant for a week his scrawls looked like the ramblings of a madman. He was a few red strings on a bulletin board away from full crazy.

He rolled over to the bedside table in his dorm and picked up his tablet and started scrawling what he could remember before the dream left him - after a brief time only the 'feelings' remained, the 'emotions' - the actual data was lost. But he was sure of one thing - Beryl didn't need to get all seven rainbow crystals. Or anything else she wanted. The last time she got what she needed to win a war?

The Earth burned.